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The “konditorei” in Sankt Florian, Austria offers fine pastries and wonderful hot chocolate. It was the perfect location to interrupt a holiday for a bit of work. Over a slice of strudel, I spent a few minutes last week contemplating my colleague Andy Mukherjee’s well argued article about the danger robots pose for the modern economy. Looking around the bakery-cafe, I saw why Andy should be proven wrong.

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Many economics students are unhappy with what they are being taught. A network of 62 groups from around the world has drawn up a petition calling for more “pluralism” in instruction. The malcontents find the dominant neoclassical model too narrow and want to know why so few experts predicted the 2008 financial crisis. They also want less abstract theory and more study of actual economies. The reproaches are just, but the students’ reform agenda is insufficiently radical.

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It was front page news in the Wall Street Journal. For three long hours last week, there was no trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the home of S&P 500 stock index options and the Vix volatility index. The Journal quoted a trader: “It was very, very unnerving”. Risks went unhedged. Experts worried about the effect of a more grievous software fault on an even more important exchange. What would happen then?

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Author Profile

Edward Hadas writes about macroeconomics, markets and metals for Reuters Breakingviews. Before becoming a journalist, he worked for 20 years as an equity analyst in Europe and the US. His book, "Human Good, Economic Evils: A Moral Approach to the Dismal Science" is published by ISI Books in Wilmington, Delaware. He has also written a course-book about political philosophy for the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham. Edward has degrees from Columbia University, Wadham College, Oxford and the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has a website, edwardhadas.com.